


three's company

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, they all have the hots for each other, they're very confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 11:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2619716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I considered it for a long time,” Tony continues. “I thought I could be okay with it. I’d have myself convinced I could keep going on like this, but then I’d catch him looking at you. And I realized I couldn’t let him do it, staying with me when he loves you more.”</p><p>“He doesn’t love me more, he just loves me differently,” Bucky says quietly. “C’mon, Tony. Like I said, I know him best. And I know he loves you just as much.”</p><p>Tony’s jaw shifts. “I’ll try to believe that.”</p><p>Bucky nods, a short thing. He keeps looking at Tony. “So, things have to end badly, huh?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“One of us ends up without him.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	three's company

Bucky Barnes drags himself to the Tower and passes out with the voice of some British guy in his ears, informing Sir and the Captain that Bucky Barnes is, is-

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them he’s on a couch, hooked up to an IV. It takes a lot out of him not to jerk the IV out of his skin, but he forces his hand down and keeps it in there because it’s helping him, he knows, but there’s something about a needle in the crook of his arm that makes him think of Russian being spoken in hurried whispers between scientists; of his mind being slid out and fucked with and pushed right back in with instructions that he couldn’t do anything but agree to.

He’s in a lounge, a big one, bigger than any lounge he’s ever been in- he catches sight of a TV, a kitchen off to the side, a bunch of books in a shelf, a fish tank, and several people in chairs beside the couch Bucky is lying in.

There’s Natalia, whose name doesn’t sit right with Bucky now, tapping away at her phone, then a dirty-blonde man in his forties with a bow at his side looking more or less asleep, then Sam, snoring lightly, and next to him is Steve, slumped over, head pillowed on a man’s shoulder, whose dark-haired head is resting atop Steve’s.

Something about the man triggers a memory of Bucky’s- it takes him a few moments to muddle through it, to dig up the memory of standing in front of a car and aiming a bazooka at it and scattering bits of metal and the man who looked so much like the man in front of him was gasping when Bucky finally got to him and stood on his neck, shattering his spinal cord.

“B- Barnes,” the man- Howard- had said, choking it through blood, eyes wide and not fearful enough.

And then the woman, Howard’s wife- she also looks like the man with his head atop Steve’s, she had a kindness that Howard didn’t have, one that the man has etched into his sleeping face- she had seen him, so obviously she had to be put down. She hadn’t said anything useful, just panted in terror and gritted out, “No, nonono, don’tdon’tdon’t-” and let out a scream that cut itself short when Bucky had snapped her neck under his boot.

Bucky shudders at the memory, making a low sound that curdles at the back of his throat, and at it four people’s heads snap up.

First Natalia- _Natasha_ , Bucky remembers in a flash of non-existent gunfire-  stares at him, and then Clint, sleepy and incoherent, then Sam, snorting himself awake, and then Steve, blurry and slurring his way through, “Wh’t, what happened,” and they all look at him and go silent.

The last one to wake up is the man whose parents Bucky killed god knows how long ago, coming awake easy as anything, blinking hard and then meeting Bucky’s eyes steadily.

“Welcome back to the world, James Barnes,” the man says, and Bucky flinches.

-

They tread on eggshells for a while, and Bucky doesn’t blame them.

After all, he has to be restrained twice in five days, both times nearly injuring someone in the Tower- Thor the first time, Sam the second- and has to get held down until he comes back to himself.

“Sorry,” he hears himself say, both times. Hears himself gasp it, half-sob it. “Sorry, god, I’m sorry, sorry, _fuck_.”

Thor holds him down both times, Steve helping with the second, and they aren’t unkind about it either times. Thor frowns down at him, face tight and oddly understanding, and Steve strokes Bucky’s hair and grips his shoulder and says Bucky’s name, not how Bucky remembers Steve saying it, but this new way.

Or, maybe he’s heard Steve say it like this a few times, after one or two life-or-death experiences, back when Bucky was Bucky and no-one else infiltrated his mind when he least expected it.

He says it broken, pleading, and then turning familiar and steady, like he believes in Bucky more than anything. More than the God they always went to Church for. Steve suits that tone of voice, always had, and Bucky is used to that voice from Steve, remembers it like muscle memory.

Both times, the man- Tony- stands in the background, stiff and unknowing what to do, ready to move for safety, staring at Bucky with dark eyes that never fail to make Bucky think of the woman who he killed next to her husband by stepping on her neck, strangling her scream.

-

After a week, Steve appears in the doorway to Bucky’s bedroom.

It’s his bedroom now, and they’ve made an effort to really make it his, make it Bucky’s, because apparently it’s important and it’s also harder than Bucky imagined, because if Bucky doesn’t even know who he is, how is he supposed to make a bedroom that fits him?

So far, the contents of the bedroom are: a made bed, an unloaded gun under the pillow (he’s supposed to go to someone for ammunition), a dresser, a clock, a mirror, an old photograph Bucky doesn’t remember having taken of the Howling Commandos, and a handful of hairties supplied by Natasha.

He likes the hairties best. He doesn’t know why yet.

“We were thinking,” Steve says, and then stops, falls into parade rest. Bucky’s lips quirk up on habit, and he opens his mouth to tease Steve for feeling awkward, but then he gets blindsided by it and closes his mouth, biting his tongue.

“We were thinking your arm should get fixed,” Steve says after a while, after Bucky has stopped his mouth from working wordlessly, twitching around the edges in a bizarre smile. “It wouldn’t hurt,” Steve assures him, and Bucky closes his eyes against the unbelievable trust that he has directed at Steve. It’s unsafe, he figures, that amount of trust being with someone.

“Tony would do it,” Steve says, and Bucky goes stiff and doesn’t un-tense until Steve bends down in front of him and rubs his hands down Bucky’s arms, squeezing his shoulders, his elbows.

Steve’s gaze is worried, though he’s trying to pretend it isn’t. “Tony would never hurt you, Buck.”

“I killed his parents,” Bucky blurts, and Steve freezes, and then his stroking of Bucky’s arms resumes, slow and comforting.

“You didn’t. The Winter Soldier did. There was nothing of Bucky Barnes in there, they made you do it.” The look Steve has on is so goddamn stubborn Bucky almost laughs at it- he remembers the twelve year old kid with the same look, with a slimmer chin and cheeks and everything, skinny all over and making up for it by not standing down for anything.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Steve continues, and his face goes pinched. “But- Buck, that looks like it hurts.”

Bucky follows his gaze to his arm, which is metal and is sparking occasionally, plates of metal in the wrong places and bent the wrong way.

“It does,” Bucky says, and Steve’s face goes more pinched. “It doesn’t matter,” Bucky adds hurriedly. “I can cope, I’ve dealt with worse, it doesn’t create a problem, I can work with it.”

If anything, it makes Steve’s expression worse. But then he’s smiling, tight and awful, trying to put on a strong suit.

For some reason, Bucky remembers Sarah Rogers, dying of TB in her shitty hospital bed, eyes sunken and her skin sallow as she clutched her son’s equally skinny hands, remembers them with the same fucking stubborn face, like if they just pretend it’s okay for long enough, then it will be.

“This isn’t about being able to work with it,” Steve tells him, thumbs rubbing grooves in Bucky’s shoulders. “This is about you not being in pain, this is about you being okay. Tony can make your arm not hurt, Buck. I promise.”

Bucky’s throat clicks, and Steve’s eyes follow it, and Bucky remembers things in a series of flashes: Steve, skinny and mourning, drunk on whatever cheap liquor they could afford, licking his way up Bucky’s adam’s apple.

Bucky blinks, and remembers countless kisses, kisses behind enemy lines and hurried handjobs and sloppy blowjobs, the choke of his throat after they both realize at the same time that the serum has erased Steve’s gag reflex. Inching himself into Steve’s body, skinny and otherwise; Steve working himself into Bucky’s ass when he’s sixteen and again the night before Bucky falls off a train and gets his mind fucked six ways to Sunday.

“Bucky.”

He blinks again, and Steve is looking into his eyes. Bucky remembers kisses, but he doesn’t think this is where this is going.

“Tony can help, if you want,” Steve says, and Bucky trusts him more than he should.

-

He lies still, doesn’t dare to move in case Tony thinks he’s worth punishing.

They always punished him in the cell, Bucky remembers. Back when he wasn’t Bucky anymore, he was punished again and again, over and over until he was wiped clean and ready for the next mission, and some of Tony’s tech reminds Bucky of that, of getting punished until his throat was raw from screaming and he couldn’t remember his name.

But Tony doesn’t, holds up on punishing Bucky the whole way through. He fixes Bucky’s arm, telling Bucky when to move it and when to flex his fingers and when to tell him if that feels okay, and Bucky follows instructions and thinks he’s in the clear until one moment near the end where Tony looks like he’s going to say something but then doesn’t.

Bucky lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding when he walks out of the workshop, trembling now that he’s out of sight.

Steve is waiting for him in the lounge, and he smiles when he sees him, asks Bucky how it went.

“Good,” Bucky says. “It went- it was good.”

It didn’t hurt at all, he doesn’t say, and moves his arm, which also doesn’t hurt, after hurting for months on end.

-

Bucky watches movies with the team, sits next to Steve and sometimes next to Natasha. Also next to Bruce, sometimes, who calms him in a way he doesn’t get and offers to be someone to talk to even though Bucky never takes him up on it.

He sits next to Clint, who plays everything off as a joke, which Bucky needs sometimes. Sits next to Thor, who is sometimes smiling and earnest and speaks like no-one Bucky has ever met.

He doesn’t sit next to Tony, who stays in the recliner the furthest away from the group, and he’s fine with this until he notices how much Steve frowns in Tony’s direction.

“What is it,” Bucky asks one day, and Steve’s shoulders go stiff before shrugging awkwardly.

“What’s what?”

“Tony,” Bucky says, and Steve’s face does something, twists sideways and twitches.

“What about him?”

“Most of the time you’re happy when you’re with him, but you look sad when you look at him sometimes.”

Steve’s smile is just as sad. “Oh. Right.” He scratches the back of his neck, familiar and making Bucky ache in ways he didn’t know he could. “Uh. Buck, that’s ‘cause he’s reminding me of how things used to be.”

“How did things used to be?”

“He used to,” Steve says, and sighs, shoulders going heavy. “Tony used to seclude himself from the team on purpose. It took him ages to stop him doing that, and now- now it’s like he’s slowly pulling away, doing that all over again. I hate-”

Steve’s face does the twitching thing again, and Bucky’s stomach is churning, making him nauseas.

“I just want things how they used to be,” Steve finishes, and then looks up at Bucky, smiles a smile that isn’t as sad as the last one. “But I want you there, of course. I want things to be how they used to be, but with you there beside me.”

-

Bucky’s arm starts acting up again, and he goes down to the workshop on his own this time.

Tony startles when he sees him, and he pushes the goggles up his head. “James.”

“Tony,” Bucky replies, and puts his hands in his pockets before remembering and pulling his metal hand out. “My arm is, uh, malfunctioning.”

Tony switches off his- his- Bucky doesn’t know what the hell that is, wouldn’t care to guess, either, but he turns it off and starts towards Bucky.

He forces himself not to shudder when Tony takes ahold of Bucky’s arm, twisting it gently to see the damage. “What happened?”

“Slipped while I was cutting celery.”

“Ouch,” Tony says absently. “Okay, sit down in the chair, let’s see if I can work my magic.”

Bucky sits, holding his arm out, and Tony guides it to a comfortable position before getting to work. Half an hour passes, and they both stay silent apart from Tony’s occasional mathematical mutterings about Bucky’s arm.

Bucky starts watching him around the fifteen minute mark: how he moves, the lines of his face, how his fingers work around Bucky’s arm, gentle and firm.

“Done,” Tony says suddenly, and Bucky startles. “Sorry,” Tony continues, and Bucky still isn’t used to that, to people caring about how he reacts.

“Go easy on it for a while,” Tony advises, and then snorts. “Not that I’d expect that, I’ve heard all the stories from Steve. You’re not as much as an adrenaline junkie, but apparently you’re close.”

“Whatever you’ve heard, the stupid punk is ten times worse than me,” Bucky says, oddly unsurprised by himself saying it. He’s been doing that lately, saying things that sound more like he remembers himself being before he got all fucked up in the war and afterwards.

Tony lets out a bark of laughter, as surprised as Bucky is, and Bucky watches his teeth flash, his eyes crinkle, and remembers both his parents’ eyes going dull under Bucky’s boot.

“’M sorry,” Bucky says, his throat going dry as he says it, and Tony’s laughter dies.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says again, and swallows. It doesn’t help. “I know you know, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, thank you for not- for not-”

His throat seizes and he splutters to a silence, and Tony isn’t smiling as he puts his hand on Bucky’s flesh arm.

Bucky closes his eyes, waiting, but nothing happens.

“Nothing to be sorry for, Barnes,” Tony says, not sounding casual but not sounding like anything else, and Bucky opens his eyes and Tony is turning back to clean his equipment like he didn’t just have a chance to get revenge on the man who murdered his parents.

Bucky keeps waiting, but all that happens is Tony starts cleaning his equipment and says over his shoulder, “Is your arm okay now? Did I fix it?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says hoarsely, flexing it. “It’s good.”

“Great,” Tony says, and doesn’t say anything else, and after a few minutes, Bucky gets off the chair and leaves.

-

 Steve starts acting distant, and Tony starts getting snappish, and Bucky lingers in the background and makes assumptions and tries to swallow back his hope, because there’s no way in hell he should be happy that Steve’s relationship is falling apart.

Tony and Bucky don’t spend a lot of time together at first, apart from getting Bucky’s arm repaired- whenever they’re in the same room, there’s this odd tension that Bucky doesn’t know how to categorize, so they usually stay out of each other’s way.

This keeps up until there’s an accident, and a cave-in, and Bucky and Iron Man are trapped underneath a building for several hours.

“Thought that suit of yours could bust through this stuff,” Bucky grunts as Tony re-sets his flesh arm, pushing it back into place.

“I could,” Tony says. “But it’d make all this rubble come down on both of us, so maybe not.”

Bucky grunts again. “We could try the-”

“Communicator? Dead. They have our co-ordinates, they should be coming soon.”

Bucky nods, and there’s a long silence before Tony clears his throat. It’s put through the voice modulator in the Iron Man suit, so it comes out strange.

“Steve cares about you a lot.”

Bucky jerks his head towards him on automatic. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he cares about you, too.”

He can’t see Tony’s face through the armour, but he thinks he detects a trace of bitterness in his tone when he snorts. “Not like cares about you. Trust me.”

Bucky pauses, looks at Iron Man’s impassive mask through the dust. It’s hard, since there’s only a few streaks of light showing through the building that is collapsed on them, only leaving a small bubble of space.

“He loves you,” Bucky says, before he can talk himself out of it, and Iron Man goes rigid. “I’ve seen how he looks at you, how he talks to you. Whenever he’s around you, he’s-”

“I can’t compete with the legend of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes,” Tony snaps, effectively cutting Bucky off. “Jesus, the man drove a plane into the ocean the day after you died because he couldn’t cope being around when you weren’t.”

Bucky twitches. Dust lands on his arms, flesh and otherwise.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says eventually. “I know Steve the best, right? So trust me when I say he loves you, Tony.”

Tony stays silent, doesn’t speak until light breaks through and the Hulk pulls them from the rubble.

-

That night, Bucky is doing his usual patrols- which are strictly unnecessary according to JARVIS, but Bucky does them anyway- and hears Steve whimper.

Bucky freezes long enough to hear Steve make another noise, high pitched, and then Bucky is heading for him, hand curling around the knife he has strapped to his thigh. He’s fumbling through the muddle of his mind, wondering why he knows those noises, those particular ones- though he supposes he knows all of Steve’s noises, knows them by instinct, and this is what he thinks right up until he reaches a door and looks in to see Steve being pinned to the wall by Tony.

Tony shouldn’t be able to be pinning Steve to the wall, Bucky realizes, and it all comes to him with a jolt: Steve is letting Tony push him up to the wall by his wrists, letting him nose against his neck and press his leg between Steve’s thighs.

Another moan, and Steve’s blushing like he always does, embarrassed but loving it, like Bucky knows he always does. It sets something off in Bucky, something long-asleep, something he wasn’t allowed when he was having his mind twisted for someone else’s’ devices, and it curls low in his gut as Steve squirms against Tony’s grip.

“Tony,” Steve gasps, and Bucky watches, mute, as Tony takes ahold of Steve’s hair and jerks Steve’s head to the side, exposing Steve’s neck so he can bite at the tendon there.

Steve makes another noise, higher than ever. He bites his lip, and Bucky watches the pleasure etched out on his face, his muscles bunching, and remembers pushing Steve down onto a bed and hearing Steve moan like that.

“Missed you,” Tony murmurs into Steve’s neck, sucking a kiss into it. He lets go of one of Steve’s wrists, pushes a hand between Steve’s legs.

Steve’s mouth falls open as Tony kisses his neck, sucks at it and hums, “Mm, fuck, missed you, Steve.”

“Missed you, too,” Steve says breathily, using his free hand to drag Tony’s head up for a moment so they can share a kiss, open-mouthed and sloppy, before Tony is back to sucking on Steve’s neck, both of them rutting against each other like they’re starving for it.

“Oh,” Steve says, squeezing his eyes shut and letting his head fall back. “Oh, Tony, shit, _god_ -”

Steve says Tony’s name again, even more breathless this time, and Bucky suddenly feels dirty, like he’s intruding- which he _is_ , he knows, but somehow he’s rooted to the spot as Steve arches against Tony and says his name and chews on his lip like Bucky always remembered him doing when he was trying to stop himself from making too much noise. He did it a lot in the orphanage, he remembers-back when they had just started doing this, when they were almost out of there and into the army, he remembers Steve biting his own lip or the pillow when he was afraid someone would hear them and come in.

Again, Steve says Tony’s name, repeating it like a mantra, head tilted back as Tony sucks on his neck, stopping to either bite or press kisses around the fading bruise.

When Steve starts to say Tony’s name and his voice breaks on it, Bucky makes himself leave, because he knows what it means when Steve’s voice starts shaking during this, and he thinks if he sticks around to see that then he won’t be able to cope with himself.

-

Things are different, after.

Bucky spends more time with Steve, who seems less distant now, who smiles easier and slings his arm around Bucky’s neck when they walk together sometimes.

Tony seems better, too- he’s happier, sits next to the group like, according to Steve, he used to do. Until something happened, and Bucky is pretty sure he knows what that something is.

-

Here’s the thing:

Bucky likes Tony.

He does. The guy is an ass at the best of times, but he tries, and he’s good to his friends most of the time, and he’s good to Steve as much as he can be. He’s kind, though he doesn’t like to show it, and he’s oddly sensitive though he doesn’t know quite how to handle it.

He hits on so many of the things Bucky likes, is attracted to, and Bucky figures out way too late that he doesn’t just like Tony, he _likes_ Tony.

It makes him panic when he first realizes, makes him go and take a shower and curl up at the bottom of it for a while the spray made his fingers wrinkle, but the day after that, Bucky thinks he might be coming around to it.

It’s not like anything will happen, he reasons. Steve’s with Tony, and Tony’s with Steve, and they’re happy together, so Bucky is happy for both of them. It doesn’t matter that Bucky has loved Steve, loves him so much it’s wired into whoever he was before all this, can’t remember a life without loving Steve and can’t make sense of a life without it.

Steve is his North Star, the guy who he’s rescued from enough fights he’s lost count, who he loved when he was ninety pounds soaking wet, loved when he could lift Bucky over his head like he was nothing, loved him when they were thirteen and hiding from the cops in a trash can, loved him when Bucky didn’t remember his own name.

He loves Steve, will always love Steve, and something about Tony makes Bucky’s chest twinge like it used to when his feelings for Steve started, back before coloured TV was popular. He could feel about Tony like that, he knows, but like hell if he’s going to break up the two of them to find out.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one who has that epiphany.

-

He’s reading a book by a sixty year old who was born decades after he was when JARVIS speaks up.

“Mr. Barnes?”

“Call me Bucky or call me James, we’ve talked about this, J,” Bucky says, not looking up from his book, turning a page as he says it.

“James,” Jarvis says, and Bucky looks up, surprised. “We may need your help in the west hallway.”

“Sure, why,” Bucky asks, finding a bookmark and keeping his place before putting the book down.

“Sir and the Captain require your assistance.”

Bucky’s already on his feet. “With what?”

“A discussion they’re having.”

“Mind elaborating, J?”

A pause. Bucky hasn’t heard Jarvis pause before. “They are having a disagreement I believe you may be able to put an end to.”

“What about?”

“What is their disagreement about, do you mean?”

“Yeah, that,” Bucky says, making his way to the west hallway with increasingly fast footsteps.

Another pause, and now Bucky is getting seriously worried. “I think it would be best for you to find out for yourself, James.”

Bucky swears under his breath in Russian before turning the corner to hear Steve and Tony fighting. He slows, keeping his footsteps quiet as he nears the corner where they’re going to be.

“-please, you don’t have to do this-”

It’s Steve, pleading and pissed off but mostly desperate. Bucky forces himself to keep walking slowly.

“Steve- Steve. Trust me when I say I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t fucking do it,” Steve snaps, and draws in a shaky breath. “Tony, god. _Please_. I-”

“Don’t, don’t you dare,” Tony says warningly. “Don’t say it, I’m doing this so you’ll be _happy_ , Steve.”

Bucky hears a thump, though not flesh against flesh, more like flesh against wood. “You make me happy!”

“Fine, but you don’t belong with me.”

“Wh- you can’t tell me who I belong with, people don’t belong with people, that’s idiotic-”

“Look at me.”

“Steve, look at me. Look me in the eyes, and tell me you aren’t still in love with him.”

Bucky’s breath catches in his chest, and still, there’s silence. It goes on for a good five seconds before Steve makes a noise like a sob and says, “I love you.”

“But you love him, too.”

“Tony-”

“Say it. Please.”

“I love him, too,” Steve says, like it’s wrenched from him. “Okay? I do. But I, I won’t- he’s my friend, he’ll always be my friend, it’s always been like that, and _I love you_ -”

Bucky rounds the corner just in time to see Steve pulling Tony in for a kiss, tears streaking his face, and Tony leans into it for just a second before jerking away, barking, “No, okay, just- fucking no, don’t fucking do that, you can’t just kiss me and pretend like you’re not in love with Barnes, it doesn’t work like that-”

Steve stares at Bucky, and Tony stops and turns around and then he stares, too.

“Buck,” Steve says faintly, and Bucky can’t deal with this.

He leaves, and he hears an intake of breath behind him, but he doesn’t know whose it is.

-

Tony finds him first.

He climbs up into the rafters, and then fixes Bucky with a look. “Been talking to Clint, huh?”

Bucky shrugs. “It’s weirdly comforting.”

Tony sits next to him, and Bucky notes that he’s careful to put an inch’s width between them.          

“How much did you hear,” Tony asks finally.

“Not much,” Bucky admits. “I got the gist of it.”

“What’s the gist, then?”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “You’re trying to break up with Steve because you think him and me belong together.”

“You don’t think so?”

Tony says it like he doesn’t care, but Bucky sees the locked jaw, the fingers that are white around the wood.

“I’ve always loved Steve,” Bucky tells him. “But- he loves you.”

“He loves _you_.”

“So he loves both of us.”

They sit with that, looking out over the lounge, legs dangling over the wooden beams.

“I’d think you’d be able to deal with that,” Bucky says finally, and, when Tony looks over at him: “Being with him, while knowing how he feels about me.”

Tony laughs, but there isn’t any mirth in it. “Believe me, I considered it.”

He takes one hand off the wood, takes his time easing out a splinter that has been caught in his pointer finger. When he’s done, he spits it out and it falls into the lounge. “I considered it for a long time,” Tony continues. “I thought I could be okay with it. I’d have myself convinced I could keep going on like this, but then I’d catch him looking at you. And I realized I couldn’t let him do it, staying with me when he loves you more.”

“He doesn’t love me more, he just loves me differently,” Bucky says quietly. “C’mon, Tony. Like I said, I know him best. And I know he loves you just as much.”

Tony’s jaw shifts. “I’ll try to believe that.”

Bucky nods, a short thing. He keeps looking at Tony. “So, things have to end badly, huh?”

“What?”

“One of us ends up without him.”

“It’s going to be me,” Tony says, and before Bucky can say anything, he continues, “No, don’t, shut up. He practically died for you. He woke you up from 70 years of brainwashing. I can’t compete with that.”

“You’d be surprised,” Bucky tells him, remembering all the times he’s seen Steve look at Tony, like he’s shocked with how much the man makes him feel, like he’s at sea.

-

Later, Bucky is surprised that he’s the one who thinks of it. Out of all of them, he’d think it would be Steve, who isn’t as pessimistic as him or Tony, but instead, it’s Bucky who thinks it up.

It’s a day after the confrontation, when all of them have stopped talking to each other and both Steve and Tony are sulking in their separate rooms.

Bucky is on the internet, surfing through the last 70 years of history, and he gets an idea.

He double-checks it, triple-checks it and for good measure he calls Sam and asks if it’s a real thing, to which Sam informs him it is, and also does Bucky want to tell him anything, and Bucky hangs up on him with the promise he’ll fill Sam in later.

He prints out the definition, stares at it for a while.

 _‘ **Pol.y.mar.y** : is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved_.’

In a language that Bucky never got the chance to learn, it means ‘many loves.’

He gets Jarvis to call Steve to Tony’s room, faking an emergency, and Bucky arrives when Steve does, panting and wide-eyed.

“What happened,” Steve asks, and Tony blinks at him.

“Uh, nothing,” Tony says slowly. “What happened to you?”

“JARVIS said,” Steve starts, but Bucky cuts him off.

“Yeah, I got him to say that,” he says, and they both turn to look at him.

Steve frowns. “What the hell, Bucky?”

“I have an idea,” Bucky tells them both. “And it’s a brilliant idea.”

“Oh, well if it’s _brilliant_ ,” Steve says, sarcastic as anything, and Bucky doesn’t bother fighting down his smile.

“Tony,” Bucky says, and Tony folds his arms before grunting a reply. “You said you couldn’t be with Steve if he was still in love with me, right?”

“Thank you for rubbing salt in the wound, Barnes.”

“Just answer the question.”

Tony squirms. “Not exactly,” he says slowly. “It’s more because I know that being with me means he can’t be with you, and he’s unhappy because of it.”

“Tony,” Steve sighs, but Bucky stops him.

“What if he could be with both of us?”

That shuts them up, both of them staring at Bucky like they don’t know what to make of him.

“I found out about this thing,” Bucky continues. “Polygamy, or polyamory, or somethin’, I’m still fuzzy on the details- basically, it means Steve could be with both of us, if we’re okay with it. And, uh. I wouldn’t hate adding Tony to the mix. Think it’d be kinda swell, actually.”

They keep staring at Bucky until he snorts. “What, I got something on my face?” He even swipes at it for good measure.

“Buck,” Steve says. “You’re suggesting that we, that all of us-” he waves a hand between the three of them and trails off.

“If you two are up to it, sure,” Bucky says, shrugging. He pockets his hands, getting more nervous with every passing moment where they don’t give an answer. “Fellas? Anything?”

“You aren’t just doing this so we make up, right,” Tony asks lowly, and Bucky’s face twists.

“I have other ways to do that, I’m not proposing this so you guys will stop moping. I actually want this.”

“You do?” Tony’s expression is still unreadable. “With- me, too?”

“Yeah, with you, too, slick,” Bucky says, and takes a leap of faith, moving forwards to the man who’s fixed him up time and time again, keeping his eyes fixed on his so he can gauge when Tony wants out. But Tony doesn’t move, he stays where he is and his lips part when Bucky eyes them.

Bucky leans in, curls his thumbs, metal and flesh, into Tony’s belt loops and tugs him the rest of the way in, pressing their bodies together before their mouths meet, brushing against each other’s gently. Bucky brings his metal hand up, uses his thumb to push against Tony’s bottom lip, tugging it down slightly before leaning in to kiss him again.

A few meters away, there’s a choked-off gasp, and Bucky grins against Tony’s mouth before twisting his head to look at Steve.

“You good over there, Stevie?”

Steve is standing in parade rest, eyes hazy. His gaze darts from Bucky to Tony, then back again.

Bucky startles when Tony’s lips brush his neck, press a kiss there before sliding up to Bucky’s ear. “I say we invite him to join,” Tony says, well aware that Steve can hear, because he smirks when Steve shudders.

Falling out of parade rest but still stiff, Steve swallows. “I- you guys, you want this? You really want this, you’re not just, just putting up with it for my sake-”

“Hey, your boyfriend’ s pretty good looking,” Bucky drawls, and then, taking a chance: “So’s your other boyfriend, huh.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes, and his tongue comes out to wet his lips. “Tony, are you- okay with-”

“I am shockingly on board with this,” Tony says, his breath tickling Bucky’s ear. “I might’ve left out some minor details about how I’ve been burying my hots for Barnes under mountains of denial. Thought it wouldn’t help the situation. James, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this first, you are a genius.”

Bucky’s still smiling when Steve comes over to kiss him, one of Steve’s hands around Bucky’s waist and the other in Tony’s hair, Tony’s lips on Bucky’s neck and his hands wandering up Bucky’s shirt.

 -

He wakes up sometime after four in the morning, Steve clinging to him like Bucky always remembered him doing, and Tony stealing most of the covers with his arm slung over Bucky’s chest, fingers grazing Steve’s side.

Bucky lies there for a while, listening to their heartbeats fall into tandem and feeling content for the first time in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


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